Thursday, December 29, 2011

A key part of the argument for causal dispositionalism in
Mumford and Anjum’sGetting Causes FromPowers is the case against causal necessitarianism (chapter 3 in the
book). Causality is commonly thought to
imply a necessary connection between cause and effect: the authors say this is a mistake, and that
the proper modality of causation is dispositional. Causes dispose toward their effects - they
don’t guarantee them. The insight here
is that other factors can prevent or interfere with the expected manifestation
(and in everyday experience, they often do). In fact, such prevention is always possible
in causal situations, and if one moves to evade this fact by stipulating that
prevention or interference is impossible, then the resulting necessity is not
really coming from the causal process itself, but is being imposed in another
way.

To see this, suppose I specify the causal factors involved
in some manifested effect, and then someone points out another factor which
could possibly interfere (despite my match being dry, a proper striking motion
made and sufficient oxygen being present, a gust of wind might prevent the
match from lighting). Can’t I modify my
scenario to specify that the threatening factor is absent (the wind is
calm)? Leaving aside the potential
problem of listing an absence as a causal factor, the objector might present another
possible interferer (a passing car might splash water on the match as it is
being struck). So, then I, in turn, specify
that there is no nearby traffic, and so on.
In fact, no finite list of factors will ever suffice to rule out every
interferer (however unlikely). And by
the time one is led to propose a “catch-all” condition, covering the whole
state of the universe, we’re really not talking about a process of causal
production anymore.

The authors note something interesting here. They say that their argument against causal
necessitarianism does not mean they are ruling out determinism. This was a
helpful observation for me because I have been guilty of confusion on this
point. One might think “determinism”
means “causal determinism” which means “causal necessitarianism”. However, determinism can be specified in
other ways (including what might be the most common conception – see
below). Then causal dispositionalism
could be compatible with determinism. There
is a causal process, and while it doesn’t necessitate effects, necessity is
imposed in another way.

Note, that for the moment, we are leaving aside the idea of irreducibly
probabilistic causation. Such causation
is likely a feature of our world (in fact I think the a posteriori case for it is
nearly airtight), and therefore determinism is false. But disentangling these ideas remains
philosophically valuable.

As Mumford and Anjum say:
“The core idea in determinism is the fixity of the future by the past
(p.75)” If one wanted to build a model of a deterministic world, causal
necessitarianism is probably not the best tool, since the causal process doesn’t
promise to cover all the possible loopholes - for instance if there are such
things as uncaused events, then they would not be addressed.

It seems to me that the most common notion of determinism (probably
inspired by classical mechanics) is this:
given a specification of all facts, and given comprehensive deterministic
laws of nature, then the future is
fixed. There is no reason here to even
mention causation – it adds nothing to the scenario. One could be a Humean about causation and
still endorse the deterministic picture.
And given the fact that in this physics-inspired vision the mathematical
depiction of laws is symmetric with regard to time, it would be equally true to
say that the past is fixed by the specification. This is inconsistent with causation, which is
not a symmetric process. One might
believe that the mathematically specified physical laws comprise a model of a
causal world, but the laws themselves don’t constitute a theory of causation,
and may very well be inconsistent with the idea of a causal process.

On this last point, I recalled a paper I had read a few
years ago by Carl Hoefer: “Causality and Determinism: Tension, or OutrightConflict.” In this paper, Hoefer defines
a deterministic world specifically as one governed by deterministic
micro-physical laws, and then goes on to argue that this definition is
inconsistent with the presence of causation, using several philosophical
theories from the literature as examples of how causation might be characterized.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Presently I’m reading GettingCauses From Powers by Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum (and have
finished six chapters out of ten). I
expect to blog more about this book, of which I think very highly. I just wanted to very briefly comment on
events, inspired by the treatment they are getting so far in the book.

Years ago, influenced by reading (later) Russell and Whitehead, I acquired
the notion that (all else equal) there is an attraction to an ontology which
gave a leading role to events rather than one primarily featuring substances (or
objects) and their properties. There
seemed to be more potential for explaining the dynamic aspects of nature (including
mind).

But while there has been an active modern debate on the nature
of events, the most common depictions don’t seem to offer specific advantages
to an event-focused ontology. To greatly
simplify, it seems philosophers would model events either as property exemplifications,
in which case they are in danger of seeming much like static facts or states of
affairs; or else events would be associated with spacetime locations, in which
case they are little distinguished from objects, which are the quintessential
occupiers of spacetime. (The SEP article
on events is here; an IEP article with additional focus on the theories of Kim,
Davidson, and Lewis is here). These
sorts of models of events don’t seem to bring differentiated resources to metaphysical
theorizing.

The goal of the Getting
Causes From Powers book is to develop a theory of causation based on
dispositional properties, or powers. While
powers play the leading role, their theory incorporates an intriguing view of events
(at least causal events: they don’t take a position on whether there
are other sorts). Specifically, causal
events, which are manifestations of powers, are temporally extended processes.
The authors reject as misguided the typical “two-event” conception of
causation, where cause is temporally prior to effect, in part because no one
has a compelling account of how you get from one to the other. Rather causes and effects are simultaneous –
they are two aspects of a process
which brings about a change. Very Whiteheadian!